


Practice and Prudence

by tincturesofamusement (orphan_account)



Series: Dreamer Errant [1]
Category: The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon
Genre: (as of TSR), Canon Compliant, Dancing, Dreamwalking, Paris (City)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:22:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/tincturesofamusement
Summary: -Set after TSR, in Paris: Paige is starting to recover from the Archon, even going so far as to train with Warden again, but she’s having an unexpected problem. Told over the span of a day or two through three snapshots. (originally published 2019-06-12)
Relationships: Paige Mahoney/Warden | Arcturus Mesarthim
Series: Dreamer Errant [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708393
Kudos: 4





	Practice and Prudence

**Author's Note:**

> I did change my account for security reasons, which is why these are being republished under a new username. Sorry if there was any confusion!

I stumbled and fell. My arms bore my weight, but the etched word on my hand seared with pain as it crashed into the flowers. Long, twisted stems with scarlet petals and dark pollen at the center.  
  
There was something behind me. I didn’t know what it was, didn’t turn to find out, but it was there. I got up and kept walking away. The poppy anemones seemed to grow as I moved through them, reaching out to grasp my boots, so I sped up. The field stretched out far in front of me. I pounded through the flowers. The midnight sky overhead was getting closer, and I knew I would reach it if I just ran a little faster. Whatever was behind me was surely catching up, too, and I put on a last burst of speed and -  
  
Safe. The flowers were gone. Space surrounded me, empty, dark, space. No one else was here. I turned what was left of my body in a circle, slowly, looking at the absence. _Paige_. My name. Not 40, not dreamwalker, but just who I was. _What are you doing?_  
  
I spun around. No one. The voice was just there, a sequence of words spilling into my consciousness.  
  
_Paige?_  
  
This was dangerous. It must be the being that had been in the field of poppy anemones, and it must have followed me. I turned to flee again, but something tightened around me and held me back. I caught a glimpse of gold, bright and urgent, before I was yanked away.  
  
My eyes flew open. I choked on air, which was a mistake, because I needed all the air I could get. The sheets pressed taut away from me as I splayed my hands, desperate for anything that would give me another gasp of oxygen. After a minute, I’d calmed down enough to remember how to take deep breaths, and I glanced up.  
  
His expression was perfectly neutral. Even his eyes were only flickering.  
  
When he saw I had controlled myself, he stood and walked over to the window. I pulled the covers closer.  
  
“While the commitment to practicing your gift is admirable, it would be prudent to return to your corporeal form more frequently. Particularly if you refrain from informing me of your intentions.”  
  
“Sorry,” I said, hearing the insolent edge in my own voice. Warden turned to look at me, and I shifted and dropped my gaze.  
  
“Why did you stay in the aether so long?” he said. I didn’t reply. “Did you even know you were -”  
  
“I just got distracted. I lost focus.” His stare was making me blush, not that it would be visible by the dim light coming through the window. He might have been disappointed, or uncaring, or hiding concern, but I didn’t dare try the golden cord to figure out which. The less he was reminded of any connection between our feelings right now, the better. “I mean, I lost track of time. It won’t happen again.”  
  
Warden narrowed his eyes, but didn’t push the subject. “Are you all right?”  
  
“I’m fine. Thank you for - for getting me out of it.”  
  
He nodded briefly and went to the door. “Try and stay in the corporeal world till morning, Paige.”  
  
I opened my mouth to reply, but before I could think of anything to say, he’d pulled the door shut behind him.

\-----

The next morning, as always, there was a roll of bread in paper set on the table. I’d never asked where it came from, or whether it was paid for, or why he was never there himself when I woke up. Today, it made me feel strangely lonely to know that he had come back only to leave my breakfast and then gone out again.  
  
Not that I minded being alone, specifically with the knowledge that no Vigiles would come in to disrupt my solitude. And I appreciated that Warden wasn’t here all the time. I suspected that he considered it part of our agreement. After all, he was in Paris only as a representative for the Ranthen. There was little reason for us to interact at all at this point, not that that had stopped him from passing multiple hours a day with me. But he had avoided touching me since we arrived in Paris.  
  
There was a soft knock at the door, then the lock turned and he stepped in. I murmured a greeting. Warden came to the table, drumming his fingers on the back of a chair.  
  
“Did you sleep well after... I left?”  
  
“I stayed in my dreamscape.”  
  
“Not particularly, then.”  
  
I shrugged. I’d spent the next few hours doing less sleeping and more determinedly not thinking about what had happened.  
  
“Will you tell me what happened?”  
  
“I did. I got distracted.”  
  
“Hm.” He pulled out the chair and sat down across from me. “I was under the impression that it took more focus to leave your body than to stay in it.”  
  
“Yes. Usually. Maybe it’s different when my dreamscape’s been hurt,” I said, a little too quickly. “Anyway, I’m fine now. It’s not a problem.”  
  
His eyes flared at that for some reason. I kept my face blank.  
  
“Very well,” he said. “Do you think you should return to dreamwalking already, then?”  
  
I wasn’t trying to lie to him. I didn’t think it would happen again, because I had every intention of figuring out how to control my wayward spirit. Of all the worries I had about the effects of being in the Archon, unbidden nocturnal dreamwalking had not been a concern. Yet I’d still needed Warden to pull me back from the aether, and just in time.  
  
He didn’t need to think I was any more unstable. I wasn’t going to risk him watching me disappear into the aether again.  
  
“No. Not yet. I should probably wait until I get stronger.”  
  
“You, or your dreamscape?”  
  
“My dreamscape. My spirit, anyway.”  
  
I caught a glimpse of sparks in his irises before he spoke, his voice tinged with amusement. “So you already think yourself ready to return to fighting physically?”  
  
“Mostly,” I said. His gaze dropped pointedly to my wrists, where bandages were still visible under my long sleeves. “I can start training, anyway. It’s useless to stay here doing nothing for weeks.”  
  
“Useless to give yourself time to heal?”  
  
I gave him a look. “I know you’re supposed to convince me to stay and rest. It’s not going to work.”  
  
After a moment, he inclined his head and stood up. “Then we may as well begin with a dance.” He strode to the window and lifted it, letting the strains of a street trio float in. The melody was quiet, but I could clearly hear the beat of the drummer. They might have been a whisperer; certainly they knew their instrument better than the other players.  
  
I rose and faced Warden, the corners of whose mouth were just slightly closer than usual, as if he were consciously trying to keep them in place. He held out a hand, palm down. I extended mine, but he adjusted so we stayed a few inches apart.  
  
The musicians below paused and began the next phrase. Warden stepped forward and we began to move in a small circle. Then his hand lifted. I raised mine to stay with it and glanced up to see if that was what he expected.  
  
Suddenly, the fingers of his other hand were a hairbreadth from my neck. I jerked my chin around before he touched me, but when I looked back I saw that I’d been thrown off by the motion. I centered my palm under his again, more alert to his movements. We stepped in the same circle, each following the other, the drumbeat from below keeping rhythm.  
  
This time, I saw him move. He made as if to touch my waist, and I hesitated for an instant before remembering I was supposed to be avoiding that. I spun, focusing on keeping my balance, and held out my hand again, but he didn’t wait before making the same motion. This time, I turned away as soon as he moved.  
  
“Good. I should never be able to catch you off guard.”  
  
“Am I just trying to avoid you?”  
  
“You are trying to dance.”  
  
“While avoiding you.”  
  
He only raised his eyebrows. A moment later, his glove was in the space I had been about to move into. I arced my leg over it, ignoring the ache of the Vigiles’ bruises and my own underused muscles, and whirled back into the circle. Almost too late, I saw that he hadn’t stopped his motion. My hair flew into my face as I curled away, but I was already off balance and tilting forward. I stretched my fingers out to catch myself, straining the scar on my palm to the point of pain, before he caught me around the waist.  
  
I flinched and shoved him away, which considering our relative weight, almost made me topple again. He stepped back, eyes suddenly blazing, and watched me.  
  
“I’m sorry. I - I wasn’t expecting it.”  
  
“I would hope not,” he said softly. I bit down on my tongue and didn’t look at him. “Is there some reason that -”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Paige.” His voice was quiet. I knew he wasn’t angry; he knew better than to pity me; but I couldn’t bear to see him look at me like that now. Like if he watched me long enough, he would see straight into my dreamscape, see the answers I was keeping shrouded away from him.  
  
Outside, there were faint sounds of applause. A trumpet began to play a solo, a slow melody that sounded like it should be the anthem of something.  
  
“I can do it. Let me try one more time,” I said. I didn’t want him to think I was weak, I had no intention of giving up, and I was absolutely not going to stop just because he’d touched me once.  
  
“I suppose I have even less hope of convincing you now,” he said. “Remember, even if you cannot use your gift to help you, you must always be looking for what I do next.”  
  
“My reflexes aren’t good enough for what you do next, Warden. I have to be looking for what comes after that.”  
  
“Very good.” He held out his hand again, and I joined him, pacing out the circumference of the circle.  
  
First was the same move that had tripped me last time. His hand swept up behind my back, but I spun out of the way this time, soon enough to evade his jab into the air just next to my hip. He didn’t let me stop at all, somehow managing to appear in every pocket of space surrounding me, and I soon noticed the effects of the exertion. I was twirling, ducking, gliding, skipping away from him, but always pulled back into the orbit of the circle by the music. This song was faster, and the insistent drumbeats wouldn’t let me catch my breath even if Warden had.  
  
His movements shifted. Now his hands cut through the path of the circle, and I was forced to change my trajectory, spinning and twisting behind him. I registered that we were moving across the room, in the direction of the window, when suddenly he turned and stood right where I had been about to jump. I rose forward on my toes to elude his last swipe and let my momentum carry me to the wall, absorbing the impact on my forearms. When I looked back at him, his eyes were glinting with flames.  
  
“Precisely,” he said. I smiled despite myself. “Now, you should sit down. You have hardly recovered enough to be training at all.”  
  
I made my way back to the table, slightly unsteadily, and lowered myself into a chair. I wasn’t exactly dizzy, but the room had just a little more settling to do before I would feel comfortable again.  
  
“You did very well, Paige.”  
  
“Was I supposed to run into the wall?”  
  
“That seemed like the best way to eliminate your momentum.” He closed the window and turned back to me. “Were you hurt?”  
  
“Not really,” I said, tracing the length of the ridges on my palm. “How did you know how to do that?”  
  
“My reflexes are good enough.”  
  
I glowered at him. “Really?”  
  
“The description is accurate, if lacking. It takes very little time to decide how you should change your position, and I am only reacting in what you might call an inverse sense. I move to wherever you must not be next.” I watched him as he crossed to the little counter on the side of the room and filled a glass with water. “Using the sixth sense does give me quite an advantage, however. It would be far less taxing on you if you could use the aether to see my next action. As it is, the activity is more useful physically than mentally.” He set the glass in front of me and sat down.  
  
“It’s exhausting both ways,” I pointed out. “I have to be thinking about how I’m going to keep my balance in the next second and then guessing what you’ll do to ruin it the second after.”  
  
“An equally legitimate summary, if more inclined to place blame on me.”  
  
“Can’t imagine who else.” I picked up the water glass. The edges had a very slight convex curve. “It’s not like I suggested it in the first place or anything.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
I raised the glass to my lips and took a swallow of the water. It scraped past the torn tissue of my throat, and I dug my nails into the pad of my thumb to alleviate the pain. At least give me something else to focus on.  
  
Warden reached out so his hand was just an inch away, and I snapped mine into what could generously be called a relaxed position. The glass rapped down onto the table just a little too hard, but he didn’t say anything. His silence was telling enough.

\-----

I woke suddenly. My heartbeat accelerated for a moment before I took in the dark room.  
  
But nothing was wrong. Warden had left again, off to to wander Paris or fight Emim or maybe just find his own lodging. I wondered idly if Rephaim actually needed sleep.  
  
The room was quiet. There was no curfew here, but nightlife still didn’t exactly thrive in Scion citadels, and little noise drifted up from the street. I pushed myself up, easing the covers over the delicately arranged bandages, and tuned in to my sixth sense to try and figure out what had woken me.  
  
I was almost startled by how easy it was. The physical features of the room dimmed, as if a film was covering everything in my line of sight. My hand twinged just slightly, along the outline of the poltergeist’s message, but the aether was empty. My dreamscape was the only spiritual force in the room.  
  
For some reason, that made me restless. I’d been alone with my dreamscape and my pain for too long. I yearned to be around spirits again, lost in an ethereal crowd.  
  
The hallway was deserted. I paused, letting my eyes adjust; this was only my second time out here, thanks to my injuries and Warden’s persuasion. The stairs were at the end of the hall, opposite a metal door with a label denoting fire escape. I turned to the stairs and hesitated.  
  
I was on the third floor. Stairs meant three flights of trying to be silent, exiting on street level, and then having to climb back up later. If I took the fire escape, on the other hand, I would be outside right away, and no one else would bother me.  
  
The door wasn’t as heavy as it looked. I carefully closed it and let the handle up behind me, shivering from the winter chill. The fire escape consisted of narrow stairs, which went down only to the second level but extended upwards to the roof. It was crammed next to the building adjacent, and it occurred to me that the stairs might be intended for use by both sides. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the next landing up was even with the other roof. I scaled the ten or so steps without much difficulty and found myself on a flat, relatively clean concrete surface. The shelter in the middle was padlocked, but the door faced away from the wind. I huddled in the doorway and looked out at the city for a moment.  
  
There were only a few spirits nearby, but just being outside made me feel closer to the aether. I leaned my head back and submerged my vision. Paris might be sleeping, but it quivered with the same tremors of ethereal motion as London. My own spirit fluttered along with it, longing to do what it was best at, to glide freely outside corporeal restraints.  
  
I wasn’t aware of my eyes closing. I wasn’t aware of anything happening in my body. I was flying, skimming through the aether, flirting with the gleams of activity around me, soaring among the spirits of Paris. It was exhilarating to do this, to dive through my element, to dance with millions and yet only with myself.  
  
I paused to hover somewhere in the void above the city. The spirits didn’t have color, but the unmistakable pulses of energy made it a magnificent sight. I could have just watched the scene for hours, drinking in every part of it.  
  
Something knocked me off balance and I plummeted towards the city below. I couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate enough to recover. My spirit snapped back into my body, which was drowning without aether. I needed to go back - to -  
  
The golden cord wrenched again, and I suddenly realized my lungs were empty. I didn’t need aether. I needed air, oxygen. My hand clutched to my chest, pressing against the bruise that hadn’t quite faded in the center, as I gasped for breath. The pall lifted slowly from the world around me.  
  
Warden was kneeling beside me, silent, his eyes glowing with flames.  
  
I didn’t know what to say. I stood up gingerly, and he rose with me. Our eyes met. I had to do something, anything, to break the stillness.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
He took no notice of the comment. “You very nearly destroyed your silver cord.”  
  
A car passed on an adjacent street. I waited for the sound to dwindle away, trying to find the right words. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I just wanted to be outside.”  
  
“In a similar way to how you were _just_ distracted? You _just_ lost track of time?”  
  
“Yes, Warden, in a similar way to all that. I’m sorry if I’m not giving you the explanation you want to hear,” I said. I couldn’t stop myself. I hated having to stand here, under that burning glare, trying to respond to questions I didn’t have any answers for.  
  
“Then tell the truth, dreamwalker.” The way he said the last word was bitter enough to be a curse. “That is the explanation I am asking.”  
  
I just turned away.  
  
“Paige -”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it to you. I’m sorry.”  
  
His eyes finally dimmed, but he didn’t move. “You know more than I do,” he said. “Why do you keep leaving your dreamscape?”  
  
“Why does it matter?”  
  
“Do you understand,” he said very quietly, “what is at stake?”  
  
“I know it’s dangerous.”  
  
“You could easily lose your life. What is the aether offering you to be worth that?”  
  
I knew, logically, what the risks were. But from the perspective of my spirit, especially when immersed in the aether, a silver cord didn’t seem nearly as important. “Let it go, Warden,” I said. I turned away to go back down the fire escape. “I don’t have anything to tell you.”  
  
He matched my step. “I cannot possibly leave you, Paige. My orders are to keep you from harm for as long as I can, and I have no evidence that you would be safe alone.”  
  
“You -” I whipped around to stare at him. “Right. You have orders about me. And more importantly, it suits your convenience for once to follow them, doesn’t it?”  
  
“I am _not_ -”  
  
“Leave me alone,” I snapped. “Now.”  
  
He looked away from me. His jaw was tensed, illuminated ever so slightly by the flame in his eyes. “Promise,” he murmured, “I will see you again if I do.”  
  
I held my tongue for a moment. I hadn’t realized how worried he might be about what I was doing. His anger had made it easy for me to keep my own disquiet in check, but I at least could try to control my gift. All he could do was watch me, hope I kept breathing, and hope he wouldn’t be too late if I didn’t.  
  
“Fine.”  
  
Warden scanned my face. “I thought the golden cord would be the easiest way to pull you out. Did I hurt you?”  
  
“Not with the golden cord, you didn’t,” I said. His eyes darkened so I could only see a flicker of chartreuse. I raised my eyebrows, and he inclined his head before turning and disappearing over the rooftops.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading - I hope it was enjoyable for you!  
> If so, I should mention that my favorite kind of comments are any with suggestions on how I can better emulate Samantha Shannon’s writing - my goal with these works is to make it read like an excerpt from the TBS series.


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